


Overflow

by ax100



Category: Free!
Genre: Hair Washing, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-02
Updated: 2013-11-02
Packaged: 2017-12-31 06:33:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1028380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ax100/pseuds/ax100
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Makoto washes Haruka's hair.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Overflow

**Author's Note:**

> My apologies for the summary. I really couldn't think of anything because this is a pretty straight-to-the-point piece.
> 
> Anyway, I find letting someone wash your hair for you to be oddly intimate. I hope you enjoy this story! Leave a review and share it to your friends if you like it. :)

They were already late.

"Come on, Haru-chan," Makoto said, extending his hand out to the boy in the tub. "The others are already waiting for us."

It was the first day of summer vacation and, to celebrate, the team had decided to get together and watch a movie. They invited Rin, who was as good as part of the team at this point anyway, and he, in turn, invited that bright-eyed kouhai of his to join. No one really invited Mikoshiba, but when he overheard about the plan when Rin was telling Nitori about it-- _especially the fact that Kou was going to be there--_ the captain of the Samezuka Academy swim team invited himself.

Rei was the earliest to show up, of course, followed soon after by Rin, Nitori, and Gou, who all came together. They all talked for a bit while waiting for the others, but Rei--instinctively or not--conversed more with Kou while the other two had a quiet exchange of their own. It wasn't that he and Rin didn't like each other--far from it, in fact, ever since the whole fiasco at regionals had been straightened out--but they do say that first impressions last, and their first impressions of each other were not exactly the best.

Mikoshiba was the next to arrive, grinning like an idiot, waving and calling out Kou's name as soon as she was in his line of vision. It was embarrassing, to say the least, and Rin took no effort to conceal his displeasure with the common knowledge of what the captain's secret agenda was.

Nagisa and Makoto arrived at almost the same time, with Nagisa immediately greeting everyone with a flourish before proceeding to chatter into Rei's ear about whatever was running through his head at the moment, as per usual.

They all chatted for a few minutes, but as the starting time of the movie drew closer, everyone was visibly starting to get restless, with at least one person looking over at the clock near the fountain every few seconds, or someone looking down at their watch. When it was starting to cut it ridiculously close, they started discussing what to do: should they just leave Haru? Should they all go and pick him up? Or should they just send one person?

In the end, Makoto just volunteered to go and check up on Haru, reasoning that it would be better if only two of them were late instead of everyone. No one disagreed and the group separated.

Of course, that was already a little over thirty minutes ago. The others were probably well into the movie by now, and Makoto was standing here in his best friend's bathroom, leaning down with his hand oustretched.

It was all a very familiar scene, and Makoto found that he didn't mind it in the least. Sure, they could've gone without the inconvenience of being late to the movie, but the familiarity of the situation comforted him. He liked this feeling.

A beat passed--a beat that Haruka always used to look at the hand offered to him before letting his gaze trail up to the gentle smile of its owner before taking it and letting himself be hauled up to his feet, quiet complaints about the use of '-chan' on his name spilling from his mouth.

"Drop the '-chan.'" Like clockwork, there it was. And yet,

And yet...

The smile on Makoto's face fell into an expression of confusion.

His hand was still empty.

"Haru?" He addressed the boy whose eyes were now resolutely trained on the wall in front of him, making no move to get up, nor to take Makoto's still outstretched hand.

Well, this was new.

"Haru?" He asked, letting his empty hand fall to his side as he straightened up, "Something wrong?"

"No, nothing," he responded.

A moment of silence passed while Makoto tried to decipher the situation. When he could see that he had not had a lapse of logic (and dealing with Haru required quite a lot of that, as well as interpolation and extrapolation), he said, "Then...get out of the tub and let's go. The others have gone ahead already without us to the movie, you know."

"...hair." It was so quiet and Haruka's mouth had barely moved that if Makoto had not been paying full attention to the boy, he would've missed it.

"Sorry?" He said.

"My hair," Haruka answered. He looked directly at Makoto. "I still haven't washed my hair." This time, the statement came out firm, like a declaration.

Makoto wasn't sure where this conversation was headed. He fixed Haru with a confused look. "Then...wash it?" he tentatively suggested, hoping the nervous smile would sell the idea.

Haruka didn't respond for a few seconds, just staring at Makoto, before tearing his gaze away to look at the wall again, a kind of huff coming out of his nose, like that was not the answer he had been looking for.

This raised even more questions to Makoto, who was trying to solve this code in his head. _Ah, he's sulking now. Why though? Was that not the answer he was hoping for? What was I supposed to say? Ah, but in the first place, why did he say it instead of just doing it? Maybe he wanted me to get something from that. Was he trying to get me to--?_

When it all clicked together in his mind, Makoto couldn't help the audible "Ah!" that came out of him. Haruka gave him a strange look at that but still didn't seem to want to budge from his position in the tub.

"Could it be..." Makoto started, leaning down, a knowing smile on his face now, green staring eye level into blue, "...that you want me to wash your hair for you?"

Haruka's eyes widened a bit before looking back at the wall. If it were anyone else, it would've gone unnoticed, but since it was Makoto, Haruka's embarrassment was as plain as day.

"Am I right, Haru-chan?" He prodded.

"....Hn," was all Haruka said in return, his eyes darting everywhere else but at the boy next to him. He was even too disracted to retort at the use of the honorific.

Good enough answer. "Alright, come on then." When Haruka looked, he was faced with Makoto's offered hand. After a moment, wherein his eyes darted up to Makoto's gentle, smiling face, he took it and let himself be pulled up to his feet. The water fell off his body in a sheet that dwindled into trickles and drops soon after, some landing in the tub, some disappearing into his dark jammers.

At the sight of the familiar swimwear, Makoto couldn't help but chuckle. It was so like Haru to be wearing those, even within the comfort of his own home.

Wordlessly, Haruka stepped out of the tub, dripping water all over the tile floor beneath them before letting go of Makoto's hand. He stared at Makoto's legs, prompting the other boy to ask, "What is it?"

"Your pants will get wet," Haruka said, like it only dawned onto him now.

Makoto chuckled. "It'll be fine. I just have to be careful." Even he himself knew that he'd be lucky to get out of there with _just_ his pants wet. Still, he bent down to roll them up to his knees, hoping that they wouldn't unfurl and get drenched later on.

Haruka watched him do this for a moment before stepping over to the shower area and taking a seat on the low wooden stool there. After a moment's hesitation, Makoto decided to take off his socks too and stuff them into his pocket, letting his now bare toes wiggle on the cold tile floor, before taking his place behind Haruka, pulling up another wooden stool.

Once settled in, he reached over, past Haruka, to take the bottle of shampoo that was sitting there on the shelf in front of them. In the silence that enveloped the two of them, the _pop!_ of the bottle being opened seemed so loud, accompanied by the _pit-pat_ of the water still dripping off the black-haired boy.

Makoto squeezed a good amount of shampoo into his palm, distantly thinking that maybe it would've been a good idea to wet his hands first, the viscous substance sliding over his dry skin lending itself as an alien feeling to the boy, but he didn't pursue that line of thought anymore. He rubbed his hands together, spreading the substance onto both his hands, and as he reached up, he leaned a little forward and asked, his voice filtering through the humid summer air in that quiet bathroom, "Ready?"

There was a moment when Haruka tensed up a bit, but his shoulders immediately fell back down. "Un," he acknowledged with a small nod.

As soon as he was given permission, Makoto got right to the task, albeit with a bit of hesitation at the start as he thought of how to go about it exactly. Once he remembered how he used to do it though, he threw himself right into it.

As he carded his fingers through the dark strands, feeling them shift and give way under his touch, Makoto couldn't help the nostalgic feeling that ran through him. He basked in the memories that he was suddenly seeing in hazy detail. That's right, this wasn't the first time they had done this. But they had fallen out of this habit so long ago that sometimes Makoto thought that his mind had just fabricated those flashbulb memories.

But here they were now, and it all felt familiar once more--how they would wash each other's hair and scrub each other's backs after a dip in the pool, or during a sleepover. How it felt like to slowly run his hands through Haruka's hair, to deliberately press his fingertips into the other boy's scalp, to feel the shampoo gradually bubble up into white foam--

"Tch," Haruka made a startled sound and jerked forward, rubbing his forearm against his eyes, knocking Makoto out of his thoughts.

"Sorry, did I get it into your eyes?" Makoto asked apologetically, holding his foamy hands aloft.

"It's okay," Haruka reassured him, opening the faucet for an instant so he could wash the soap out of his eyes.

"Why don't you face me?" Makoto suggested, and he realized what he had said just a split second before Haruka shot him a complex, unreadable look. "Ah, well, uh..." He stuttered, trapped under the gaze. "It'd be easier for me to make sure I'm not getting anything in your eyes."

An uncomfortable beat passed wherein Makoto didn't know what was going through the other's head, but in the end, Haruka huffed and turned his body so that he was facing Makoto, their knees knocking together, their toes mingling with each other. Haruka leaned forward, like he was bowing, and closed his eyes, his hands on his lap. They were curled up into loose fists.

Makoto unconsciously breathed out a sigh and he leaned forward, his head almost touching Haruka's damp one, and he placed his hands back on Haruka's head.

Unexpectedly, he felt something like an electric shock jolt through his system. He drew his hands back fast, like he had been scalded. Haruka's brow furrowed and he asked, "Oi, Makoto, you alright?"

"Y-Yeah," Makoto replied, trying to brush it off. "It was nothing." Which it clearly was _not,_ if his rapidly beating heart and his warm cheeks were anything to go by, but he didn't understand what it was all about. What was all this, all of a sudden?

Haruka didn't buy his answer, of course, but he slowly relaxed again, breathing slowly, waiting for Makoto to finish the job. Makoto wished he could breathe that slowly right now too--in and out, in and out--but his breath was just coming out in short puffs.

Stiffly, because it would be hard to explain the sudden intermission if it carried on for too long, Makoto placed his hands back on Haruka's head, and there it was again--that electric jolt--but this time, Makoto willed himself not to pull back. _Get a grip, Makoto! It's not like you haven't done this before! What's wrong with you?_ He told himself as he continued his minstrations from earlier.

This time, however, instead of being drawn into a nostalgic haze like earlier, now all he could focus on was what was in front of him right now: Haruka. Makoto was mesmerized, to say the least, with the rivulets of water running down from Haruka's hair onto his face, down to his chin, before sliding down onto his neck and beyond it.

He caught a patch of foam that was threatening to fall off Haruka's bangs and onto his nose, brushing it back, as well as the hair that it was clinging onto, revealing more of the brunet's face.

He was mesmerized with the way that Haruka's eyelashes were short and did not curl up like a girl's, how they settled flat against his lower eyelid, the dark strands standing in contrast to the pale skin they lay upon. His eyelashes were wet too, and they clung together, some of them with water droplets bridging two or three together.

He was mesmerized with the way that the eyes behind those eyelids--vibrant pools of blue hidden from the world by a simple layer of skin--darted back and forth, searching the darkness. He was even more enraptured when he discovered that these twitches were actually responses to his touch--when he moved his hands this way, those eyes, hidden, would dart here. When he moved his hands another way, they would dart there. When he pressed the fingertips into the scalp, he was surprised with another reaction. He was almost hypnotized by the sight, by the endless spectrum of reactions he could get just from doing all this--he wanted to see them all.

But seeing was different from hearing.

Makoto was mesmerized, too, by the little sounds that he was managing to draw out from Haruka with every little move of his hands, his fingers. His ears caught the little exhales, the soft sighs that Haruka breathed out every once in a while, his thin, slightly chapped lips parting just a little to let them out. There was a bit of water pillowed upon his upper lip, and Makoto had the strangest urge to wipe it away with his thumb.

Ah, now he understood why his heart's contractions suddenly felt too strong, why his lungs suddenly felt too small, why his stomach was doing backflips, why entire body was alight with warmth and his skin was dotted with goosebumps.

It was intimate, so intimate--all of this. The closeness of their bodies (he was suddenly hyper aware of their touching knees and toes), and the act itself--his fingers combing through all that hair, just to feel the skin underneath, the skin that was hidden from sight, hidden from even the owner's vision. Makoto couldn't see it, but he could feel it. Could feel the warmth emanating from it, and it was as if he could feel every follicle, every root of the hair that stood to guard this skin from unwarranted attention, from prying eyes. And yet Haruka had let him do this, had let him into such an inaccessible part of his body, had allowed him--more than a glimpse--a touch, seeing with his his hands and not his eyes.

And more than allowing Makoto to do it, Haruka (in so many words) had even _asked_ him to.

The intimacy of it all struck Makoto and stirred the feelings within him for this boy until they overflowed, and he felt his body warm up even further with the love he felt.

"Makoto?" Haruka's voice ripped him out of his thoughts yet again, yet the feelings stayed behind. His eyebrows were drawn together, but his eyes were still closed. "Are you done yet?"

Makoto weighed in his mind how to respond. "...Just one more thing," he finally settled for. He slid his hands from the top of Haruka's head to the sides, cradling it gently, and he slowly leaned forward--his bangs intermingling with Haruka's damp ones, his forehead touching Haruka's, his nose brushing against Haruka's, his eyes locking for a moment with Haruka's when the other boy's shot open, revealing shocked blue.

They were already late.

And while the others were probably well into their movie by now, Makoto was here, sitting in his best friend's bathroom, kissing the one he loved.

 


End file.
